Inside The Wild Life of Kitsap's Lonely Protector

It's a chilly Tuesday in early December and Department of Fish and Wildlife Sgt. Ted Jackson is standing beside his gold-colored pickup truck, filling his mobile office with gasoline.

Inside the cab, a laptop fastened to the center console sits closed; a radio crackles.

A 12-gauge shotgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle are locked upright between the front seats. The backseat, overflowing with equipment, holds a tranquilizer rifle to euthanize injured animals.

Wearing a tan uniform and rugged black boots, Jackson prepares for his day. In the mornings, he does administrative work, sometimes from the laptop in his pickup, responds to dispatcher calls and patrols fish and wildlife lands.

By the evening's low tide, he positions his truck out of sight along the shorelines of Hood Canal. The engine of his four-wheel-drive is turned off as he listens and watches for shellfish harvesters. If they're gathering too many oysters or clams, Jackson will let them know.

This day he plans to patrol Lost Highway, a road that connects Kitsap to North Mason through roughly 40 square miles of forest. The land includes property owned by Pope Resources and the state's Fish and Wildlife and Natural Resources departments.

Traveling unpaved roads that every few miles fork in different directions, Jackson looks for things out of the ordinary.

Some days he'll spend a couple hours in the woods. Others, it's six to 10 hours there.

On the longer days he'll park his truck and walk, looking for tree stands, illegal bear bait stations and illegal brush pickers.

Watching the clouds sweep over the Olympics, the outwardly stoic-looking sergeant regularly checks his review and side mirrors. His years of being in law enforcement have trained him to be alert, even in seemingly isolated areas.

Because of the large area they have to cover — including Pierce, Kitsap and North Mason counties — Jackson and the six wildlife officers he oversees work alone unless dispatched to a major incident.

While the roads he patrols appear abandoned, he regularly runs into people — probably more than he runs into wildlife. He stops them to chat. If they're hunting, fishing or cutting salal, he makes sure they have the right permits.

KEEPING A BALANCE

Jackson has 20-plus years of law enforcement experience and a degree in criminal justice, which he said prepared him well for the wildlife job.

He jokes that he doesn't have to worry about the animals he encounters, it's usually the humans that cause the most trouble.

A fish and wildlife officer for 14 years, Jackson's job requires him to balance nature with civilization to make sure both are protected.

In the last 10 years, that balance has become increasingly difficult to maintain as people move into areas where animals once lived with few interactions with humans.

Two were attacked by black bears. Earlier this year, a hunter killed a bear that might go in the record books as being the largest bear harvested in the county.

Members of the public made their opinions known about how humans and wildlife should co-exist in public forums and to Jackson, who was put into the local media spotlight as he answered media questions and responded to public concerns.

After Seabeck resident Dennis Durbin shot an almost 600-pound bear off Anderson Hill Road between Silverdale and Seabeck, Jackson received calls from people wanting to make sure Durbin shot the bear legally. He called the hunter, who verified he had a bear tag.

Jackson said he wished there were more hunters like Durbin out there.

"Hunting is our only effective way of controlling our animal populations," Jackson said.

CONTROLLING ENCOUNTERS

The bear population in Kitsap is high, according to Jackson and Department of Fish and Wildlife Capt. Dan Brinson.

To keep the overall population in check, the department extended the state's bear hunting season this year.

Kingston, Poulsbo, Olalla and Seabeck are home to the majority of Kitsap's bears and cougars. As more people unfamiliar with wildlife move into these rural areas, interactions with and responses to wildlife vary.

A majority of the encounters are harmless, Jackson said, but warned that if people don't change their habits — bring in garbage cans, take down bird feeders — the animals will return.

When a bear or cougar is repeatedly spotted in a neighborhood, and residents have removed all food from outside, fish and wildlife officers take action.

The easiest solution is to shoot the animal, but that doesn't always go over well with the public. Instead officers attempt to trap and relocate it.

Last year fish and wildlife trapped 14 bears in Kitsap. Of those, a handful had to be euthanized.

In most cases when bears are relocated — often the politically correct solution — they don't last longer than three months in their new surroundings.

"We're dumping one animal into another animals' area," Brinson said. Relocating a bear from Kitsap — usually to the Olympic Peninsula — affects the dynamics of the bear population, he said.

"There's no magic place in the United States, except maybe Alaska, to take these bears," Jackson said.

As more people move into rural areas, bears are forced to live with humans, or move away. With the need to keep a roughly 5-mile radius as their territory, when bears encounter one and other, the end result can be deadly.

"Fourteen years ago there were a lot of hunters out there," Brinson said. "Now those numbers are significantly less.

"Our culture has changed and many people have lost sight of the balancing issues," between hunting and animal control, he said.

'A FUN JOB'

Winding his way out of Lost Highway, Jackson rounds a bumpy corner and comes across two men with fishing poles.

The men look surprised to see someone else in the woods, especially a wildlife officer. Wearing their fishing licenses around their neck, the men hand them over to Jackson. He talks to them briefly before they head a mile down the road to a small lake, ripe for fishing.

One of the men, Jason Luna from Silverdale, said he doesn't mind being stopped.

"We love it that they're out here because it means that we can be out here," Luna said. "There's stupid people out there and it helps to keep things regulated."

As Jackson drives down the descending highway, he continues his duties, checking license plates of cars left at trail heads and watching for illegal brush pickers.

He heads up a private road in Dewatto to an overlook with sweeping views of the Olympics and Hood Canal. During shrimp season this is one of Jackson's favorite places to sit. From this vantage point he can see the boats on the canal and if they're running ashore to dump their catches at cars parked along Highway 101.

When it's not shrimp season, Jackson still visits the lookout, saying it's a good place for paperwork. The view certainly tops that of a desk, which is one reason why Jackson chose this line of work.